Rehabilitation Paradox

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The Rehabilitation Paradox: Street-Working Children in Afghanistan Christopher Williams a; Farzaneh Yazdani b a School of Education, University of Birmingham, England b Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Jordan, Online Publication Date: 01 January 2009

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RESEARCH

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The Rehabilitation Paradox: Street-Working Children in Afghanistan Street-Working WILLIAMS andChildren YAZDANI in Afghanistan

Christopher Williams School of Education University of Birmingham, England

Farzaneh Yazdani Department of Rehabilitation Sciences University of Jordan

International humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan reflects a policy discourse of “rehabilitation,” which is very evident in relation to nongovernmental organization (NGO) projects for street-working children. Through analysing national and international policy, professional perceptions of the children, and field visits to see how policy relates to practice in NGO projects in Kabul, this article argues that the discourse is a “rehabilitation paradox.” The international goal is to return “minority” children, who are numerically the majority, to a “mainstream,” which is either mythical or a transient international elite. John Gray argues that Western utopianism explains the misguided nature of recent international military interventions, and this article extends that argument to rehabilitation. Without a concept of rehabilitation, “intervention” can be an act of wanton destruction. Policymakers need to be aware of how education can become complicit in the political arguments that are used to legitimise questionable interventions. It is proposed that, conceptually and practically, habilitation would be a more appropriate goal.

In 1989, the United Nations (UN) called an emergency meeting with the Afghan Taliban because the regime had decided to shut over 100 girls’ schools, had prohibited the instruction of girls older than eight, and was limiting the school curriculum to the Koran. Following the international intervention in October 2001, by 2004 around one half of Kabul’s boys and girls were attending state schools, through a shift system that usually provided around 2 hr of schooling a

Correspondence should be sent to Christopher Williams, School of Education, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, B15 2TT, England. E-mail: [email protected]

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day. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) address the deficit, and many projects help streetworking children, who are a visible aspect of child vulnerability in the cities (Terre des Hommes [TdH], 2004). This article stems from fieldwork and an independent evaluation among NGOs assisting street-working children in Kabul for the European Commission (EC). This entailed observation in five projects, international and local—some assisting a few dozen children, and others several hundred. Interviews were conducted with managers, other staff, and EC personnel. Internal reports and evaluations were analysed, there was a focus group discussion of initial findings, and the final report included additional comments from EC representatives (EC, 2004). To protect the children and staff, certain details are omitted from this article. STREET-WORKING CHILDREN There is considerable debate about the meaning of the terms street children and working children, and not least is the problem that even a single child can frequently shift across definitional categories. A distinction made by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in the 1980s is broadly accepted: children “of” or “in” the streets, who tend to live and sleep on the streets; and children “on” the streets, who are more likely to work there but return home at frequent intervals (C. Williams, 1993b.). For this article, the phrase street-working children is used because that has been adopted by the EC projects. A distinct feature of Kabul is that most of the children are “on” rather than “of” the streets. In Europe, formal interventions to assist children in these circumstances can be traced back to the 3rd Century Apostolic Constitutions, which declared that abandoned children should be helped within orphanotrophia and brephotrophia. These were followed by the foundling homes, agricultural colonies, ragged schools of Dickensian London, and the contemporary shelters for young, homeless people (C. Williams, 1990, pp. 42–146). Throughout this history, the aims can be categorised in terms of primary prevention, educative, corrective, punitive, and exploitative (p. 112). The current wave of international concern stems from the UN Year of the Child in 1979, and a subsequent report by the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues (Agnelli, 1986). Countless organisations now specifically address the circumstances of street children worldwide, including the production of educational materials for teaching about the problem as part of development education (Consortium for Street Children, 2005). AFGHANISTAN The history of Afghanistan is complicated, and has been epitomised by external intervention (Maley, 1998; Rashid, 2001). A simplified timeline of the past century is shown in Figure 1. Before this, the country was ruled by the Moguls under Genghis Khan (1219), the Arabs (642), who introduced Islam, and Alexander the Great (330 BC); and in the 6th century BC it was part of the Persian Empire. Soon after the latest invasion and occupation, in 2001, the UN had 500 foreign staff in the country and was employing thousands of locals, which distorted the local labour market by coring-out the most able people from government and other organisations because of better salaries and statuses (Dacaar, 2002). This was followed by many more and countless NGOs doing much

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2002: International/United Nations occupation, President Karzai 1996–2001: Taliban 1992–1996: Mujahidin 1979–1989: Soviet occupation 1973–1978: Republic, Mohammed Daud 1964–1973: Constitutional monarchy 1926–1963: Kings and warlords 1838–1919: Anglo-Afghan wars

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FIGURE 1 Afghan regimes.

the same. This increased demand for property in Kabul and inflated prices to European levels, and there is concern about environmental impacts, including abandoned vehicles and electronic equipment (C. Williams, 2004). Little has been done to mitigate the current and long-term effects of the international community, or to plan for its exit. Afghanistan’s history demonstrates the mythical nature of the Western belief in the linear rational progress of human societies. In the 1970s, 60% of the students at Kabul University were women. Pictures of Kabul in the 1970s and 1980s show a modern Europeanised city, with local women walking the streets wearing open-neck blouses and miniskirts. Now, women in burkas, many begging from cars, remain a common sight. Most of Kabul is still in ruins, and the average life expectancy for the people in Afghanistan is 43.34 years (men = 43.16 years, women = 43.53 years; Central Intelligence Agency, 2007). The first impression visitors have of Kabul is of utter devastation and decay, which has few parallels elsewhere except Iraq. The examples of “normality” are mainly built or maintained for the international community, or the new elites of warlords and drugs barons. The World Bank (2007a) reported that the primary school enrolment rate was 86.5 (gross percentage) in 2005, but the completion rate was only 32.3 (percentage of relevant age group). A drop in numbers attending school, from 2006 to 2007, to 100,000 has been noted (O’Malley, 2007). Projects, such as the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan (2005), which runs 50 projects for girls, still have to do so covertly because parents might object, and there is an ongoing fear of fundamentalists (Meo, 2005). An Amnesty International (2007) report told of a Taliban military rulebook that states the following: Anyone who works as a teacher for the current puppet regime must receive a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or group leader must kill him. Schools set up by NGOs are to be closed or be burned down (p. 3).

REHABILITATION The concept of rehabilitation seems intrinsic to the Western vision of progress because it appears to provide solutions to the inevitable deviations from the linear Renaissance trajectory. The prefix re- means “again” or “to restore to a previous state of things”; habilitate is to “make able” (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], 2008). Whatever happens—war, deviancy, or revolution—the “onward and upward” trajectory of Western progress can be maintained through rehabilitation.

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The concept underpinned social interventions in Britain in the mid-16th century, with benign intent if not outcomes. At this time, there was a shift from the punitive response to criminality toward rehabilitation in the “bridewells,” “workhouses,” and “houses of correction.” The 1779 Penitentiary Act made rehabilitation a function of all prisons. Foucault (1975) explained the relevance of surveillance to this ethos in Surveiller et Punir: Naissance de la Prison. Islam also has a concept of “corrective punishment,” Ta’zir, which is traced back to the 7th century. The clinical concept of rehabilitation is closely linked to war. Although its roots go back 2 centuries or more, this movement became very prominent during the post-war reconstruction programmes in Europe and Asia in the 20th century (Schwartz, 2003). The rehabilitation sciences, such as occupational therapy, were part of the popularisation of what is often termed the “rehabilitation movement” (Sensory Processing Disorder, 2007), particularly from the 1940s to the 1960s. The use of the term at societal rather than individual levels was marked by the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which operated from 1942 to 1947 in post-War Europe, and until 1949 in Asia. Strictly speaking, it was not a UN organisation because it predated the UN and was set up by the U.S. Congress. Following representation from Jewish organisations, its remit (UNRRA, 2007) was extended beyond citizens of the allied nations to include “other persons who have been obliged to leave their country or place of origin or former residence or who have been deported therefrom by action of the enemy because of race, religion or activities in favour of the United Nations” (“President to Seek,” 1943). The notion of “leave,” and by implication a probable goal of “return,” seem central in this view of rehabilitation. It is interesting that rehabilitation was not in the name of UNRRA’s immediate successor, the International Refugee Organisation. For the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East, founded in 1949, rehabilitation was directly replaced by “works” (whatever that means!). Perhaps it was politically too sensitive to indicate any form of return for the people of Palestine. Probably for converse reasons, the word does appear in the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia “Arab-International Forum on Rehabilitation and Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” in 2004 (Arab International Forum, 2004). The term, therefore, has many meanings beyond its social and clinical senses, and can have political significance. The current Internet presence of the word rehabilitation is surprising. On Google™ it gets 65,800,000 hits. (“Sociology” gets 60,500,000 hits.) The word has become embedded in the discourse surrounding current interventions in Afghanistan—for example, in the Bonn Agreement (2001), which urged “the United Nations, the international community, particularly donor countries and multilateral institutions, to . . . assist with the rehabilitation, recovery and reconstruction of Afghanistan . . . .” “Afghanistan rehabilitation” gets nearly 2,000,000 million Google hits, which embraces many different meanings—for example, in relation to clinical assistance and disability (Coleridge, 1999), psychosocial work (Enfants du Monde Droits de l’Homme [EMDH], 2003), offenders and child soldiers (UNICEF, 2004), and roads and other infrastructure (World Bank, 2007b.). The phrase “Kabul street child rehabilitation” gets 168,000 hits. The Web site of the Afghana NGO provides a specific list of “Afghanistan rehabilitation/ reconstruction organisations” (Afghana, 2007). Typical of the aims is that of the Afghan NGOs’ Coordination Bureau (2007): “to coordinate the activities of Afghan NGOs working toward emergency, rehabilitation and development of Afghanistan.” The Japanese agency, Japanese

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Emergency NGOs, runs a “School Rehabilitation Project,” and the International Rescue Committee assists education through its “Afghan Rehabilitation Project.” The question this raises, in relation to Kabul’s street-working children, is, “Should interventions be rehabilitating these children . . . ” •

back into a mainstream society from which seemingly they have been excluded, back into their minority street culture, and • toward a global–international world that may, or may not, be the context of their future?

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•

The dilemmas are obvious. Both the minority culture and the mainstream society are not easily defined and are often not viewed as intrinsically positive from the perspective of human rights and other international values. There would be little willingness to rehabilitate children back into the narcotics trade, extremist factions, violent families that abuse their women, or even into a communist-style nation. Yet, basing aims on the global values of the international agencies could amount to cultural imperialism, and on a practical level may fail because of inevitable subversion and resistance. The standard goal of clinical rehabilitation is relatively straightforward—the return, as far as is possible, toward the biologically “normal condition” of a human being, which is viewed as intrinsically desirable and even has legal meaning (Hart & Honore, 1985). There is discussion about how far this should go in relation to disability (e.g., people with hearing impairments) and an argument that the social model of disability is equally, if not more, important than the medical model (Coleridge, 1993), but these discussions do not negate the underlying goal. Similarly, the basic goals of rehabilitation in the form of reconstructing physical infrastructure and organising public services are not very contentious. In relation to social, educational, and other psychosocial interventions, the concept of rehabilitation is not so straightforward, especially in settings such as Kabul. Not least, the idea of street-working children as a minority who are in need of integration into a mainstream where children rarely work is a recent Western construction of childhood and social organisation that is constantly changing (Aries, 1962). In practical terms, many children in Kabul may be better off working than experiencing humiliation and violence in bad schools (Harber, 2004), and their contribution to household income may be very important. If rehabilitation is the goal, the key question that should guide projects should be, “Rehabilitation to what?” Yet, it seems that this is rarely considered at a conceptual level. This article addresses this question by the following: •

Examining the policy context for working with vulnerable children in Afghanistan. Explaining the professional perceptions of street-working children in Kabul. • Providing a critical evaluation of the links between policy and practice within projects. • Proposing a different discourse to describe the aims of educational intervention in circumstances of this nature. • Locating the findings in a broader political philosophy debate. •

The next three sections of this article start with an evaluative discussion from the perspective of an international agency view (The Policy Context), but then continue on to critically assess the assumptions underpinning this perspective from the viewpoint of the children of Kabul and the NGO sector. The fourth section proposes an alternative conceptual goal of habilitation, and the

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conclusion locates the situation within broader theoretical and global discussions of international intervention and utopianism.

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THE POLICY CONTEXT From an international perspective, provisional state policies in Afghanistan created a helpful overall framework for project intervention. The Afghan government’s National Development Framework provided for development in relation to “humanitarian and human and social capital,” which included refugee return, education and vocational training, health and nutrition, livelihoods, and social protection. The social protection programme considered, “vulnerable populations—including women and orphans,” and continued that “the protection of the disabled, women and children from abuse and neglect are essential elements of a social protection policy” (Government of Afghanistan [GoA], 2002, p. 24). It also stated that, “Opportunities for income-generation for families will be critical for maintaining peace and stability in our country.” The use of the word families is significant because it embraces the likelihood that children may contribute economically, and by implication, education planning should therefore accommodate the needs of working children. Similarly, the Livelihoods and Social Protection Public Investment Programme (GoA, 2004) concluded that “targeted investments in livelihood promotion and social protection to tackle [problems such as] chronic poverty, infant malnutrition, reintegration of returnees and Internally Displaced Persons, and inequality for disabled persons” (p. 17). The policy issues identified include human rights and gender empowerment, and the first programme objective is “to reduce vulnerability in the short-term through effectively targeted and appropriate social assistance” (p. 17). The EC Country Strategy Paper 2003–6 reflects these ideals, and specifically mentions “the promotion of human rights; the protection of children and other vulnerable groups . . . [and] issues relating to migration and trafficking in human beings” (EC, 2002, p. 26). Within public administration reform, the EC intent is to “improve the government’s ability to develop policy to deliver basic services” (EC, 2002, p. 7). The policy context for educational initiatives for vulnerable children was, therefore, rudimentary but supportive of NGO project work and of progressive (by Western standards) state service provision. These policies unashamedly reflected international values and a belief in a goal that Afghanistan can progress toward a modern, Western-style democratic state. This was reiterated in the Berlin Declaration (BD, 2004), which refers to lay[ing] the groundwork for an elected Government and Parliament, and an independent Judiciary, which guarantees the constitutional rights of all its citizens—men and women—and adheres to the principle of human rights and the establishment of a self-sustaining, market-orientated economy (p. 1).

This assumes that such a state is both desirable and feasible, yet beyond Kabul and a few other large towns, this form of governance and value system has rarely existed in the region. Therefore, the smuggled assumption is that any form of rehabilitation—be it of cities, societies, or individuals— should also fit with these policy goals, yet that assumption is plainly not generally shared by the Indigenous community. If it were, international military protection would not be needed to protect those trying to introduce these values, and President Karzi would not have felt it politically necessary to agree to plans to reintroduce a Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—the organization that provided the Taliban religious police (Koghlan, 2006).

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STREET-WORKING CHILDREN IN KABUL A UNICEF survey in 1997 provided a comprehensive picture of the circumstances of children in Kabul during the Taliban era (Gupta, 1997). Over 90% said that they were afraid of dying. Over one half had seen torture or murder. Many had been made to watch public amputations and executions. Over 80% said that they could not cope with events and that life was not worth living, and 41% had lost one or more parents because of violence. Those who had these experiences are seen as a “lost generation” who are now too old to come within the ambit of the normal public services that help vulnerable children (Bhutta, 2002). The type of education experienced by these children is described by Nayyar (1998), and the broader educational implications of an extremist setting are well discussed by Davies (2008). Surveys of street-working children are notoriously unreliable (Ennew, 1994), but studies suggest that there has been an increase in the numbers in Kabul, from approximately 40,000 to 60,000 in 10 years. The likely reasons are increases in returnees from Iran and Pakistan, the increasing cost of living in Kabul, lone mothers, and remarriage. This is paralleled and fuelled by apparent increases in the numbers of drug users and AIDS cases and anecdotal evidence of the emergence of low-level street violence and crime (De Berry, 2003; TdH, 2002). However, the situation in Kabul is distinct from similar countries, as there appear to be very few children living and sleeping on the streets, and orphanages seem to accommodate children who would not normally be considered as orphans. It is reported that around 90% of these orphans have regular contact with families. The absence of a street-living community is said to be because of strong traditional extended-family adoption, the difficult climate, and migration to the streets in Pakistan. Therefore, an alternative view of the so-called “problem” of street-working children in Kabul is that the current situation represents an astonishing success in terms of social and family strength and cohesion in devastating circumstances. Non-exploitative work by children might be seen as contributing to this success rather than being intrinsically wrong. Positive work can help to hold families together, both economically and emotionally. From this perspective, therefore, the problem is not that families are falling apart and abandoning children, but that state services are not adequate in terms of quantity, quality, non-violence, or flexibility to meet the needs of children who must work. The lesson, drawn from European post-war history, is that the incidence of street-living children is not only related to poverty but also to the perceived social value of children, as Viviana Zelizer (1994) argued very convincingly in Pricing the Priceless Child. The image, still in the minds of European policymakers, is that immediately after World Ware II, UN organisations were accommodating millions of “war-vagrant” children (United Nations Educational, 1951), and large-scale orphanages, Boys Towns, and other shelters were created. However, within 5 years, most of these services were not needed because of widespread formal and informal adoption and fostering. Like UNRRA, rehabilitation was not permanent. The war vagrants were seen by European society as victims and deserving of help. They were within a post-conflict social context that wanted to nurture its child population because children were very highly valued. The assumption that seems to underpin assistance for street-working children in Kabul is that the current situation is similar to post-war Europe and, like UNRRA, rehabilitation is short term. Some projects have an overtly stated psychosocial approach, and employ therapeutic models. For others, rehabilitation is simply taken to mean getting the children into school or into employment.

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However, this takes little account of the fact that, even in the 1940s, Europe was highly industrialised and had experience of an effective “modern” public service infrastructure and administration for at least 50 years, which was based on centuries of gradual evolution. Most important, in post-war Europe, rehabilitation was a shared and completely uncontentious goal. This assumption also ignores local custom. Although the “value” of children in Afghanistan is seemingly high, and that probably explains why there are so few children living permanently on the streets in Kabul, that value is often in terms of economic capital (child labour), social capital (children can be traded for favours and status, particularly girls), and arguably a religious capital (supporting an extended family and assisting orphans fulfils religious edicts). That is not to say that other forms of value do not exist or that parents are all emotionally uncaring, but simply that the exigencies of extreme poverty combined with local tradition can make other forms of value very significant. The practical outcome is that many parents do not want their children to attend school or educational projects; and, if they do, they want little more than free child-minding for a particular period. Taken literally, the rehabilitation of Kabul’s street-working children might mean preparing them to return to a social context and value system of this nature. Yet, currently, judging by the aims in the internal project documents, street-working children are to be rehabilitated for life in a notional, modern, Western city—a society with an effective education system and other state-run public services, a Western view of women’s and children’s rights, a Western-style democracy, and a capitalist economy. NGO SECTOR PROJECTS The EC and NGO projects for street-working children are framed in terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They collaborate to form a Children’s Rights Consortium (CRC), which provides an effective mechanism for encouraging cooperation and avoiding competitive humanitarianism between projects. The consortium provides the means to coordinate proposals from the individual projects, arrange joint training, and share good practice between projects and with relevant government training organisations. The work of the CRC NGOs is excellent by any international standards, and even more impressive when viewed in the context of Afghanistan’s past and present circumstances (Cordell, 2004; C. Williams, 2004). Projects show a good awareness of local community dynamics and potential problems, maintain good records and case notes, and integration of children into mainstream schools seems successful within current constraints. Unfortunately, the integration of children into schools is impeded by the state policy that integration can only happen once a year. If children are properly supported, the entrance points could be increased to two or three, or even open access. The range of project activities appears progressive—including circus skills, traditional music, appropriate sports for boys and girls, and computers donated by international NGOs. Some projects, particularly francophone, adopt a conspicuously psychosocial approach to children and families (EMDH, 2003). All seem aware of the effectiveness of building curriculum around the children’s needs and lifestyles, rather than imposing alien school subjects (C. Williams, 1992). Projects are cautious about providing residential care because this can become a “free hotel” for local children, which worsens the problem of children becoming detached from families. However, there will inevitably be a small number of children who require “rescue” and shelter at night (C. Williams, 1993a.).

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The election in October 2004 was used by projects as a means to educate about democracy, through activities and discussion. The organisation and management of projects attempts to be participatory at all levels, and children are quick to express opinions. Projects adopt a clear democratic rights approach in their education programmes, which aims to contribute to the broader development of a democratic rights ethos in Afghanistan in the future. It is remarkable to see how well girls and boys are integrated within the projects. Classes are usually mixed at a primary level, and there is voluntary integration at older levels for certain activities and classroom group work. Through employing and showing respect for local women, the projects also model progressive gender relationships in the workplace. This all seems to be contributing to a more international view of tradition and gender. The projects are low-key about AIDS awareness education. Afghan tradition and the conservatism of families are thought to minimise the likelihood of AIDS among the children compared with similar countries, but that is likely to change. Specialist NGO workers estimate that those infected range from 500 to 50,000; the official estimate is 21. Girls and boys involved in prostitution (e.g., in Districts 1 & 2, the [only] Chinese restaurant, cinemas, with truck drivers, and the military) and related employment (e.g., boy or girl dancers— mujra) seem a clear concern, as are refugee and returnee communities. NGOs like ORA International have an excellent awareness of the situation (ORA, 2004). Vocational training is seen as an important aspect of rehabilitation, and projects address this, providing a range of activities from welding to artwork that is suitable for the highly decorated lorries and coaches in the region. However, the unpredictable nature of labour markets, and life in Kabul, means that a large investment in infrastructure to teach particular skills that may become redundant could be wasteful. Local UN experts say that tailoring and similar skills should be avoided, as China is increasingly providing cheap imports. Construction is the main growth area, beauty services are seen as significant, and international catering is considered important for the future. Providing child care on short-term project funding is inevitably problematic. The tension is that funders want to retain control of projects and avoid open-ended commitments, but the needs of some children are long term. When projects undertake to help a child, they make a moral commitment to provide adequate support, if needed, for many years. However, although the intent is that the provision of services will be taken over by the state, project workers are well-aware that this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. They realise that there is no mechanism to ensure their moral commitment, and ceasing to support children because funding has ended could be perceived as a form of child abuse by local people. This tension exemplifies the contrast between the narrative of inevitable progress that international organisations pervade, which is reflected in the BD (2004) and the views of those working in Afghanistan. The official perception is that the state will soon provide adequate Western-style public services, but this is in contrast with what local project workers say they believe will happen because they can see the magnitude and intractability of local problems. Most of these projects are also tiny and very labour-intensive. Some help a few dozen children with a very high staff–child ratio. If they all closed overnight, few people, except those directly involved, would notice. Many projects are not engaging in the “scaling-up” activities that are essential if their influence is to be extended (Edwards & Hulme, 1992). Even if they adopted good scaling-up practices, the Afghan state does not have the capacity to develop what has been learned and extend it on a significant scale, so the likelihood of contributing to the rehabilitation of the public services seems remote.

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Inevitably, the projects reflect the assumptions about rehabilitation embodied in policy and in Western views on the nature of street-working children, and this leads to “invisible” aspects of child labour that are equally, if not more, serious, which are not well addressed. These include the following: 1. Street-living children: Although projects believe that there are very few such children, adult street dwellers (very dirty, dressed in all their clothes, carrying bags of belongings) are evident near Kabul’s main shopping area, Chicken Street. The existence of streetdwelling adults is known to attract children into street living. 2. Nomadic children: These children are usually omitted from the profile of street and working children. Nomadic camel caravan communities are evident, even in the centre of the city, and there may be non-Afghan children in Kabul who are not from traditional nomad groups. Dark-skinned children, with the appearance of Southern Indians, beg from cars. 3. Drug users: There are press reports of a poderi who occupy “the worst of the city’s bombed-out ruins—places shunned even by the most desperate homeless families” (Meo, 2004, p. 36). The Nejah Rehabilitation Centre estimates that the number of drug users has increased from 4,000 to 60,000 in 10 years; and 2,000 are female: “Babies are being born addicted, children . . . working in the carpet trade are allegedly fed opium to numb them through long hours of work” (Meo, 2004, p. 36). 4. Older street-working children: Because most projects focus on an age range of 6 to 16, most of the youths served by these programs are young. Yet, older children have distinct problems, especially the generation of the Taliban era, and are more likely to become involved in crime and other high-risk activities. They are hard to accommodate within the type of projects currently running because they may be disruptive and are often unlovable in the eyes of staff. 5. Domestic labour: Normally done by girls, this work is often not viewed as “child labour,” despite the fact that it can be equally detrimental and prevent school attendance. There are also street aspects of this—shopping, taking siblings to school—and parents may well push these children into street work in the hope of gaining help from projects. Other child labour issues in Afghanistan include the following: • Children are likely to be involved in sweatshop labour, mainly carpet making; and this may increase as economic activity picks up. Eventually, this is likely to include hotel work. • Children are known to be involved in the sex trade (e.g., dancers, children working with truck drivers) and related trafficking—both girls and boys. The gateways to this include being turned away from an orphanage or project. U.S. bases are said to create the demand. • Street-working children are inevitably in detention centres, prisons, and orphanages, and have the same justice and service needs as others. 6. Children of prisoners: These children will suffer economic hardship, low self-esteem, and alienation. Asne Seierstad (2004) drew attention to this circumstance in The Bookseller of Kabul. 7. Children of single women: The children of widows, divorcees, and unmarried mothers are very evident accompanying women, usually dressed in burkas, who are begging. 8. Child soldiers: There is some disagreement about the existence of former child soldiers. According to the UN demilitarisation programme, United Nations Development Programme-Afghanistan New Beginnings Programme-Disarmament, Demobilisation, Reintegration, fewer than 100 have been identified, and the problem is virtually nonexistent now.

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In many countries, social workers informally admit that many street-work projects construct their success by working with the easiest clients, and that is why children such as those mentioned earlier are excluded (C. Williams, 1990). In theory, this can be mitigated by changing evaluation indicators. A demand to present the numbers of children assisted, in project evaluations and reports, is likely to deter projects from working with the more vulnerable children and to encourage them to demonstrate success through helping large numbers of the “easy” children. Formal outcomes such as lower educational achievement, poorer health, greater criminality, and less-successful integration into schools may be positive indicators that projects are successfully working with the most vulnerable children. However, the underlying factors constructing the invisibility of these children seem to arise because the children do not fit the international vision of the future—a Western-style nation state into which Western-style children are to be rehabilitated. Therefore, it is conceptually easier to ignore them. If a proper statistical survey were possible, working children, together with these invisible children, would probably represent the majority in the region. Such a survey would probably, therefore, reveal a rehabilitation paradox about the “rehabilitating children into mainstream society” rhetoric—that projects are notionally aiming to rehabilitate children into an elite minority society that is largely mythical, and, which, if it does exist in any significant form, may not be sustainable, or even desirable, when international assistance declines. HABILITATION Faced with this probable rehabilitation paradox, how can such projects express their overall purpose conceptually? Arguably, in the form relevant to this discussion, the word rehabilitation is a linguistic lock-in stemming from the two World Wars when European cities were to be returned to their former glory and soldiers were to be returned to active service or to useful employment. Even in post-conflict zones like Sarajevo, this ethos was reasonable at political and practical levels. However, settings such as Afghanistan are not 20th-century Europe. What is the former desirable condition toward which a past-oriented rehabilitation is directed, in a place like Afghanistan? Even if this can be answered, there is a deeper conceptual problem. It might be possible to reconstruct a building or restore artefact to a former state, although there is much debate in conservation studies about whether even this is possible or desirable (Thomson, 1986). However, it is arguably never possible to rehabilitate a human to “a previous state” (OED, 2008) because our biology, mental state, and social relationships change over time, and time cannot run backward. The desirable family, community, school, or other context will never be quite the same in the future as in the past. Arguably, this applies even to physical injuries. The rehabilitated state of a broken foot will never be the same because the body becomes older. The eventual state is likely to be worse, or even better, with excellent physiotherapy, but it cannot be the same. Clinically, the aim might be expressed in terms of the foot “regaining” function, but it could also be described simply as “gaining” function from a damaged condition. The clinical approach and outcome will be no different, so why the past-oriented concept? Philosophers, such as Barbara Adam (1998), have done much to introduce the time dimension into social sciences. Perhaps the same is required in relation to the concept of rehabilitation in all its forms.

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We could well question the “re-” of many concepts. For instance, why does UNICEF have a “reintegration programme” for Afghan child soldiers when the only regime they have known and could therefore logically be reintegrated into is that of the Taliban? Why is the aim to help the children to “re-enter education” when many of them have never been to school, and if they have it was probably the insular Madrassahs that militarised them in the first place (UNICEF, 2004)? Why do the peace negotiators talk of “reconciliation” (UN, 2005) and not just “conciliation” if the aim is to move forward from an intractable dispute? Why does the U.S. Congress Bill aim “to reestablish a representative government in Afghanistan” when there has never been a government that represents the whole population (U.S. Congress, 2000)? Is it helpful to have language such as that in Article 8 of the Afghan Juvenile Code (which will relate to many streetworking children): “Confinement of a child is considered to be the last resort for rehabilitation and re-education of the child” (UN, 2007). The phrase has overtones of the worst excesses of communist China, unless social control and forcing children in a particular political mould is actually the aim. Conceptually, therefore, the starting point to address the rehabilitation paradox is linguistic. Instead of rehabilitation with its implications of recreating a previous supposedly desirable, but elusive, condition—a goal that is almost certainly delusional—it seems more useful to think of habilitation—simply to “make able” (OED, 2008). A distinction between rehabilitation and habilitation, in relation to younger children, is already made in some of the clinical literature— for instance, from Sweden (Lind, 2003). To go a stage further, in 17th-century English, the word abilitate (OED, 2008, see habilitate) appears even more useful. Abilitation is used in Russia to describe centres for orphans (Russian Orphan Opportunity Fund, 2007), and it appears occasionally now in U.S. literature. This term is arguably better in English because the goal of developing ability is immediately evident; therefore, it is the intrinsic link with education. Why use a redundant “h,” which is pronounced by English speakers but is silent in the original French? Another aspect of the rehabilitation paradox is that, in parallel with the past-oriented view of social rehabilitation, the clinical perspective is now not intrinsically retrospective in practice. The goal is usually expressed simply in terms of helping people to have the best possible capacity for life, or toward the hypothetical “normal condition” of a human, but not a past condition. The major rehabilitation models, such as the Model of Human Occupation (Kielhofner, 2004, 2007), can be applied equally well to a future-oriented abilitation as to a restorative past-oriented rehabilitation. In some countries (e.g., Germany), habilitation is the name of the highest academic degree, beyond a basic Ph.D. It is the ultimate goal of education. Perhaps the significant lesson the rehabilitation sciences can teach educationists is that the goal of education should not just be to build capabilities that fulfil an occupation and create well-being, but that occupation and well-being can be used to build those capabilities (Yazdani, Jibril, & Kielhofner, 2007). There are many transferable strategies to achieve that, but the means and end must be a meaningful or purposeful occupation. Those adjectives are missing from much education policy and practice. CONCLUSION: THE POLITICAL PARADOXES By international standards, the national policy context in Afghanistan appears supportive of initiatives to assist vulnerable minority children and of progressive international best practice.

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However, policy assumes an immanently achievable future circumstance reflecting a Westernstyle state, which seems improbable. It also embodies a 20th-century policy discourse of rehabilitation. Perceptions of the circumstances of street-working children, and how they can best be helped, reflect this discourse. This results in a “rehabilitation paradox” within which the goal is perceived as returning “minority” children, who are arguably the majority, to a “mainstream,” which is either mythical or an elite minority that may be transient and is probably not even desirable. In addition, there is no exit strategy—no plan about how to rehabilitate people from their rehabilitation when the rehabilitators leave. Whether Afghanistan moves toward a Western or Indigenous style of governance, or something completely different, education should not be trying to “return” young people to a mythical society—past, present, or future. Rehabilitation sounds positive, uncontentious, and relatively straightforward, but the reality is that reconstructing damaged buildings and infrastructure is usually more difficult than constructing new buildings and cities; and the rehabilitation of educational provision, and the re-education of children who have experienced the trauma of conflict and perhaps extremist education (Davies, 2008), is much harder than creating new educational services for children who have simply never been to school. The political significance of rehabilitation can be related to the recent discussion by philosopher John Gray (2007) in his book, Black Mass. He argued that the present Westerninspired interventions arise from a mistaken belief that it is possible to create utopias. The fight against “evil” is deeply rooted in Western thinking and happens under ideological banners such as “democracy,” “freedom,” “fundamentalism,” and more recently as “creative destruction.” As an interesting contrast, Gray pointed out that the Persian prophet, Mani, based his teaching on the belief that evil could never be removed totally from human society. Roberto Unger (2007, p. 23) reflected the same argument in his concept of “democratic perfectionism.” This article proposes a logical extension of Gray’s (2007) thesis: that, after they have overcome apparent evil through violent intervention, Western ideologues appear to believe that they can rehabilitate with the same delusional, or deceitful, utopian goal in mind. The notion has been reinforced by the broadly successful wartime rehabilitation movements of the 20th century. Is the link between Western utopianism and rehabilitation a coincidence when we recall that the rehabilitation sciences first became firmly established in America? Here they were paralleled by the ongoing significance of resurrection, revivalism (being “born again”), and restoring people and societies—“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6). These sciences had their earlier roots in Europe, where the concept of restoration had rehabilitated English elites from an era of regime change, and renaissance (rebirth) had permitted Europeans to reinvent the trajectory of their linear progress back to the Greeks and other former civilisations, which created the ethical rationale for their era of world colonisation. Whatever its roots, rehabilitation can sometimes have significant political meaning, particularly before military intervention. It might even become an aspect of the preemptive deceit (C. Williams, 2007), which legitimises political violence through inferring a promise that whatever damage is done can easily be repaired. The notion of rehabilitation embodied in UNRRA, and later in the Balkans, was catagorically different because it was clearly post hoc, and those promising the rehabilitation were not responsible for the initial harm. Education can become

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complicit in this form of political argument, not least because the redemptionist narrative of the school teacher is deeply ingrained (e.g., as within films such as Dangerous Minds [Smith, 1995], Goodbye Mr. Chips [Wood, 1939], and Dead Poets Society [Weir, 1989]). The Washington-based Centre for Public Integrity reports that before the invasion of Iraq, in November 2002, a senior figure from the private U.S. international development agency, Creative Associates (CA), who had previously been a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) education director for the Middle East, took part in a discussion with USAID officials about Iraq’s education system. At the point of the invasion, CA was selected to run a project in Iraq and stated that by October 1,595 schools were “completely rehabilitated and reconstructed” (B. Williams, 2007). The rehabilitation (perhaps even resurrection) ethos was embodied in the project name: Revitalization of Iraqi schools and Stabilization of Education (RISE). The project directly involved the military, alluding to “community grants for school rehabilitation” and of the urgent education-sector rehabilitation achieved under the . . . RISE project. . . . [T]he project, Education II rehabilitated schools and teacher training centers throughout Iraq. . . . Seventy-six Model Schools were rehabilitated. . . . Creative directly managed the rehabilitation of 76 of those schools. . . . [F]our schools in Tameen Province (Kirkuk) were also in a non-permissive security environment and were rehabilitated by the U.S. Army. (CA, 2007a.)

CA have also worked in Afghanistan since 2003 “to help Afghans rebuild their education system after years of war and hardship” (CA, 2007b.) The “re”discourse is frequent in U.S. documents. For example, in 2005, Present Bush asked Congress to support (inter alia) a “Commanders Emergency Response Program . . . to continue a very successful program that permits U.S. military commanders to assist in small-scale local reconstruction, rehabilitation, and recovery initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan” (InfoUS, 2005). The broader arguments arising from this discussion are, therefore, that at policy levels, rehabilitation and related concepts are often used inaccurately and, at times, politically. Education providers, especially NGOs, need to consider this to avoid becoming complicit in questionable political arguments about recovering from “creative destruction” and then creating Western utopias. The concept of habilitation seems less problematic because it simply implies improving abilities, not repairing strategic harm, and a return to a previous, perhaps mythical, condition. This does, of course, then beg the questions of which abilities and why? Without the concept of rehabilitation, intervention could be construed as an act of wanton destruction, and in some cases even a war crime. We need to very carefully consider the degree to which rehabilitation is deployed as an adjunct to political violence and the role of education provision in this. In his early consideration of humanitarian intervention, UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (1999), drew parallels with medical intervention. The points that have been missed about Annan’s discussion are that the doctor will seek consent (or equivalent) before intervention, and medical ethics has provided copious consideration of the possible dilemmas before they arise. The ethics of humanitarian intervention do not, therefore, exist in a moral vacuum; and, as Annan suggested, there is much that could be learned from medicine. If an ethical basis is not established for the humanitarian persona of intervention, and the rehabilitationist myth is not questioned, our political leaders might become like omnipotent surgeons who will risk any operation on the basis that the rehabilitation therapists can clear up any resultant harm.

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Christopher Williams is based at the Centre for International Education and Research (CIER), University of Birmingham. He has also held posts at the universities of Cambridge, Cairo, London, and the United Nations. His focal interest is educating for global justice.

Farzaneh Yazdani is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Health and Social Care, Oxford Brookes University. She is a psychological and educational counsellor, and her specialisation is psycho-social Occupational Therapy. Her current interests are the broader relevance of rehabilitation theories, and Occupational therapy ‘without borders’. Her initial education was at the University of Medical Sciences, Iran.